the american factfinder (ready reference instructional presentation)

The American FactFinder@ The U.S. Census Website

Austin St. PeterDominican University, GLIS

Ready Reference Instructional Presentation:

The U.S. Census website, located at www.census.gov is a veritable fountain of information. Census data is invaluable for learning facts about population, housing, income & economic status, education level, racial demographics, and the connection of employment to place.

Obtaining meaningful access to the data contained therein can be tricky.

Introduction

http://www.census.gov/

One of the primary ways to access this data is through the use of their Data Tools & Apps.

The Census site provides over a different tools – each of them with their own particular focus and function.

Our focus for today’s presentation is the American FactFinder tool.

Introduction

American FactFinder is the Census Bureau’s main method for providing user access to the bulk of its current data.

This tool can be a great resource for finding popular facts – especially ones about places and communities.

Click the image to opena link to the main page!

Introduction

The American FactFinder Main Page

Clicking on the Logo on the previous page should have brought to the American FactFinder Main Page (above). If it did not, open a browser and navigate to factfinder.census.gov or click the link here.


From the main page, there are several different areas of interest. In the upper left hand corner, you will find the main navigation bar, search options, and downloadable resources. (We’ll return to this in more depth shortly.)


In the upper right hand corner, you’ll find links to a feedback portal, an FAQ, a glossary, and a help page. There is also an English/Spanish language toggle. (Unfortunately, only data from Puerto Rico is available in Spanish.)


In the center of the page, you’ll find popular tables – don’t overlook this area of the main page, as once in a while you’ll find what you’re looking for without even having to search!


Finally, at the bottom of the page you’ll find the latest news, provided tutorials, an address search, a clickable that will take you to an email sign-up page, and further supplementary information.


(I’m not sure who this kid is, but she’s being an awful good sport about me doodling all over her main page.)

Using the AFF Search Options

Let’s take a closer look at main navigation bar

and search options – which are the bread and butter of site. Here, we’ll

find the most direct tools for retrieving

census data.


You’ll notice that with the exception of the

“home” link, the navigation bar and

search options have exactly the same names.

This is because they’re simply two different ways of navigating to and accessing the same search and download options.


Enter the city Pontiac, Michigan

into the “Community Facts” entry field

And then click ‘Go’.

(or, alternatively, click “Community Facts” and type Pontiac, Michigan in the entry field on the following page.)

(Why Pontiac, Michigan? Because that’s the “rust belt” city where I was born.)

The AFF “Community Facts” Search

This is the “Community Facts” data display page.

(As you can see, like John Mellencamp I was born in a small town.)


The navigation menu on the left side can be used to find information from ten different subjects of inquiry.

Say for a moment you wanted to answer the question, “What kind of work do people who

live in Pontiac, MI do?”


You could find the answer to this question by clicking on the “Business & Industry” tab, then clicking on the “Economy-Wide Key Statistics” link.


Doing so will take you to a table services page which will display the latest relevant data.

By looking at the table, you can see that by both by amount of business done and by number of establishments, people in Pontiac, MI by far and away do manufacturing, food service, and retail work.


Here are some examples of other questions you could answer using the “Community Facts” search:

- What is the high school graduation rate in Salt Lake City, UT?- What is the median household income in area code 90210?- How many people in Oak Park, IL are under 30? - How many vacant rental units are there in Chicago, IL?- How many U.S. citizens live below the poverty level?

The “Community Facts” search is just one of the three primary ways of searching census data on the American FactFinder site.


The other two search methods are the “Guided Search” and the “Advanced Search”. The “Guided Search” is the most limited in terms of available user inputs and search results. Hence, we won’t spend time covering that search method in this instructional presentation.

Important Note: any time you move from one search type to another, all of your search settings, selections, and inputs (normally called a “search string”) are erased. So make certain that you’re ready to move on or that you’ve written down or otherwise saved your search string so that you can recall it if needed.

The AFF “Advanced Search”

Returning the the main page, either click on the “Advanced Search” tab on the navigation bar – or – click on “Advanced Search” in the list of search fields and select “Show Me All”.


Doing either will bring you to the “Advanced Search page”, where users can construct far more complex search strings in response to more precise queries, and in doing so find more specific data than is possible through the other two searches.


Say, for instance, you wanted to find out what percentage of households in the metro Detroit area were single-race households. A search string for this information might look like this:

Click on: GeographiesClick on: The “Select a geographic type” menuSelect: Metropolitan Statistical Area (310)


Click on: GeographiesClick on: The “Select a geographic type” menuSelect: Metropolitan Statistical Area (310)

Select: Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI Metro AreaClick on: Add to your selections


This will add Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI Metro Area to “Your Selections”. It will also begin generating search results from Census data tables.

Click the close button on the right side of the screen.


From here, you’ll need to do some narrowing and refining. Select: Show results from and click ‘2014’. Then, click the race/ancestry selector under the race, ancestry, or tribe entry field.

From the options that come up, select “Black or African american alone or in combination with one or more other races”. After this selection, you’ll have one very specific search result. Click on it.


Here, we find our answer for the percentage of single race households in the metro Detroit area: 95.1%.

Is this an extraordinarily high number? Well, using the Census data, this is a question that also could be answered!

Conclusion

Obviously, the “Advanced Search” required far more steps and presented a far higher amount of difficulty than the “Community Facts” search.

What I can say is this: with time, the amount of information that you can find using these resources is staggering. It’s worth the time and investment to put in.

I’ll conclude this presentation with a short list of resources and citations. If you require any further assistance, stop by my desk or email me at [email protected]. I’ll be happy to assist!

mailto:[email protected]

Resources

You can find a full list of the tools available at Census.gov here at this link:

http://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/guidance/which-data-tool/data-tools-chart.html

The Census Bureau also provides their own “Quick Guide to American FactFinder” which can be downloaded as a pdf from this link:

https://www.census.gov/prod/2009pubs/mso09aff.pdf

American FactFinder also has a “Getting started with American FactFinder” page that can be accessed at this link:

http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/using_factfinder.xhtml







References

Cassell, K.A. & Hiremath, U. (2013). Reference and information services

(3rd edition). Chicago: Neal-Schuman.

U.S. Census Bureau. (2015). American factfinder. Retrieved on November

1st, 2015 from http://factfinder.census.gov/

http://factfinder.census.gov/

http://factfinder.census.gov/

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